


Nerding Out Together

by L3t_U5_D0_That_Aga1n



Series: Marvel Hero Academia [12]
Category: Captain Britain and MI: 13, Spider-Man - All Media Types, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Discussing Superhero technology, Don’t copy to another site, Friends being Nerds, Friendship, Nerds being Friends, Peter Parker's a genius and people need to know that, nerds being nerds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:29:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26193439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/L3t_U5_D0_That_Aga1n/pseuds/L3t_U5_D0_That_Aga1n
Summary: In which David Shield bonds with a Hero.
Relationships: Peter Parker & David Shield
Series: Marvel Hero Academia [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686835
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	Nerding Out Together

Nerding Out Together

**Spider-Man, Captain Britain, and all associated characters, are property of Marvel. My Hero Academia and all related characters are property of Kohei Horikoshi**

/+/+/+/+/

“Hey, David, sorrygottago!”

David Shield blinked, hair ruffling as Brian Braddock rushed out of his dorm. He stared after the tall blonde, chuckling as he leapt over a girl tying her shoes. Probably forgot about one of his physic projects—or, more likely, he did remember, but only just woken up now after the mutual thrashing he and Rhino had given each other. Toshi was still sleeping off his exhaustion at their dorm—the Japanese Hero mumbled something about Morlocks before shutting the door to his room.

In any case, he’d come by to drop off some notes to Peter before heading down the library for his own studies. Now that he knew that Peter Parker was _Spider-Man_ —which was still _awesome_!—the fact that he was late to or otherwise missed so many classes made a lot more sense (and the fact that he maintained a 4.0 GPA all the more impressive).

“Peter?” he called as he entered the dorm.

“In my room!” came the Hero’s muffled shout.

David walked further into the dorm, stopping at the door to Peter’s room. “You decent?”

“The hell kind of—yeah, of course!”

“Just making sure,” David replied, opening the door. He’d been to Peter’s room multiple times, and he had to say, even if he moonlighted as one of New York’s most (in)famous Heroes, he kept a very bland space. The only bit of the dorm he’d personalized was his bookshelf—which was chockfull of scientific textbooks and journals.

Currently, Peter was leaning over his desk, the lamp shining down on—!

David couldn’t help it. He gasped, a wide smile overtaking his features, “Are…Are those your web-shooters?”

Peter sighed (David knew he was annoyed by the hero-worship, but if Peter—who was Spider-Man!—didn’t deserve it, who did?). He turned around, sending David a flat stare, “Yes.”

“…Awesome!”

“Ugh,” Peter scoffed, turning back to his most vital and recognizable tool, “keep it in your pants.”

David let the mild insult wash off of him. He did, however, frown as he noticed that Peter was using pair of thin tweezers and…a soldering gun. “Isn’t it illegal to have those in the dorms?”

Peter stopped, looking over his shoulder, “What? You gonna rat on me?”

“Course not, just…wondering where you keep it.”

“Ceiling vent.”

“What?”

Peter grunted, putting the gun down and leaping onto the ceiling. He popped open the vent, reaching inside and pulling out a decent-sized toolbox. “Ceiling vent,” he repeated, dropping back down with the box. Peter placed the box on the desk, fixing David with another stare. “Didn’t you have something for me?”

“Hm? O-Oh! Right! Let me just, hold on,” David swung his backpack around, pulling out the notes from their advanced biology course.

Peter took the notes, leafed through them, and snorted. “Oh, it’s just the Krebs Cycle.”

“Yeah, _just_ the Krebs Cycle,” David mocked. He was an engineer at heart, any biological topic deeper than anatomy making his head spin. But he needed the scholarships…

He shook his head, returning his attention to Peter’s web-shooter. It was…surprisingly thin. The device was open, revealing dozens of tiny cogs and gears, stuck together in a way that, from what he could infer, would act as a sort of conveyor belt.

“See something you like?” David jumped, earning a chuckle from Peter.

“Jerk,” David said without any real bite. “It’s just…I never really thought about _how_ these things work.” He gestured to the device, “Those gears…it’s some sort of…mini-conveyor belt?”

Peter smirked, “Close.” He turned back around, grabbing the soldering gun and tweezers, “Give me a second.” He fiddled with the web-shooter a bite more, before nodding, closing it up and clasping it over his left wrist. He then rifled through the box, pulling out a dozen small, steel square containers.

David recognized them. Those were the cartridges that held the webbing he shot out. More than a few people online had tried to figure out what the webs were made of, tearing apart empty ones found in the aftermath of particularly brutal fights (David included). No one ever cracked the formula.

He rummaged through the box again. He pulled out some black electrical tape, tearing off a bit and taping it to a cartridge and putting it (and the other cartridges) on the web-shooter. Peter held up his arm, showing the web-shooter to David. “Watch,” he said. He moved his hand in his signature hand sign (a variation of the punk rock ‘devil horns’, something a few Soccer Moms still give him shit over), his middle and ring finger pressing down on a button hovering over the edge of his palm. In the blink of an eye, the cartridges rotated to the right, a faint whirring sound emitting from the web-shooter. When the cartridges made a full revolution (the marked one returning to its original position, there was a louder (but still faint) clicking sound, and a hiss of air coming from the web-shooter’s nozzle.

David stared at the device in unabashed awe, silently opening and closing his jaw. It was only when Peter snapped his fingers in front of him that he exclaimed, “That’s amazing!”

“Yup.”

“It must’ve cycled through all of them in less five seconds!”

“Yup.”

“And it can tell whether or not they’re empty?”

“Yup.”

“And emits an audial cue to verify that everything is, in fact, empty?!”

“Yup.”

“Oh my god,” David stepped back, running his hands through his hair, “this…this is an amazing invention! Forget the superhero thing—well, no, keep doing that,” Peter snorted, “but if you went public with this…you could be rich!”

“…I could, yeah.”

David paused, his glee dying down. Peter’s lips were pulled into a smile, but there was pain in his eyes. Clearing his throat, David looked away, eyes locking on one of the empty cartridges on the table. He picked it up, turning it over in his hands, “There’re entire chatrooms dedicated to trying to figure out what your webbing is made of, you know?”

Peter’s smile grew more genuine, “I read through them whenever I need a laugh.”

“Are they close?”

“You mean are _you_ close?” David chose not to answer. “Well, kind of. There’s little nuggets of truth spread out everywhere, but no one’s put all the pieces together.”

“How did you?” David asked, putting the cartridge down.

Peter pursed his lips, and before David could recant his question, Peter asked, “Promise not to tell anyone?”

David tried not to smile—he was pretty sure the Hero only humored him for Toshi’s sake. But for Peter to actually offer something, implicitly trusting him with a vital secret—David was tempted to pinch himself. Instead, he nodded.

Peter grunted, reaching into a desk drawer and pulling out a large…Etch A Sketch?

“Helps me visualize synthetic compounds,” Peter answered the silent question, furiously twisting the dials. When he finished, he nodded, carefully placing the drawing tool on his desk. “Take a look.”

David stepped closer, frowning at the large compound Peter had sketched. “…Is that…I want to say nylon but…?”

“Nylon’s the base, but there’s some protein compounds from spider silk jammed into there.”

“So…this is what your webs are made of?” David arched a brow; something about the formula felt…off.

“Oh no. There’s, like, five more proteins to the formula. This is as far as my dad ever got, though.”

David blinked; Peter had loads to say about his aunt and uncle, but he never had much to say about his parents (aside from the implied ‘they’re dead’), “Your _dad_ was a superhero?!”

Peter’s lips twitched, “No. He was a scientist for the U.S. government.”

Oh, well…that was the last thing he’d expected to hear.

“And he didn’t have putting on skintight spandex and charging headfirst into danger in mind when he was making this.”

“What did he have in mind?”

“Superglue.”

“What?”

“It was his pet project,” Peter shrugged, “Came up with the idea in high school and worked on it on-and-off.” Peter’s smile turned wistful, “It’s one of the few things he left me when he died.”

David looked away, feeling awkward; his father walked out on his mom before she even knew she was pregnant. She didn’t bother finding him to tell him, and when David grew old enough to know the particulars of everything, he never cared to seek him out.

Peter dispelled the awkward atmosphere with a laugh, “I remember, think I was four, one of my dad’s more spectacular failures. He ended up gluing his hands to his face.” Peter broke off into a chuckle, “And, he ended up making the mixture stronger than he intended, so he had to coach my mom and Uncle Ben through making a stronger solvent.”

“Gah,” David shivered, though a smile wormed its way to his lips as well, if only due to Peter’s good mood.

“Anyway,” Peter turned back to the formula, “After he died, I’d spend my free time trying to solve it. Close out his unfinished business, you know? Course, I never got any further along than he did. Until a few years ago.”

“What changed?”

“I got my powers.” At David’s incredulous stare, Peter shrugged, “I can’t really explain it. I don’t know if the bite—”

“Bite?”

“Oh, did I never tell you? I got bit by a radioactive spider and woke up the next day with superpowers.”

David stared blankly at his friend. “…Let’s go back to your dad’s unfinished compound.”

“Sure,” Peter smirked. “Where was I…ah, right! Anyway, I don’t know if it’s because my powers make my synapses fire at a faster rate, or, being part spider, I just have a natural affinity for adhesive substances. Whatever it was, one day I looked at the formula, and it all just,” he snapped his fingers, “clicked into place.”

“And you decided to take it a step further,” David concluded. Peter nodded, and David decided not to say that Peter could make a fortune with this creation as well.

Instead, he turned his attention back to the web-shooter, welling up his courage before asking, “Could I…try that on?”

Peter quirked a brow, “…Hold up your left hand.” David complied, and Peter peered closer. David must have passed inspection, because a minute later Peter unclasped the web-shooter from his own wrist, “Sure.”

David managed to keep from dancing in glee. He did, however, smile from ear-to-ear. He quickly accepted the device, closing it over his wrist so fast he ended up pinching his own skin. He ignored the pain though, falling into a pose like he’d seen Peter do in multiple photos (he wasn’t able to push the button down no matter how hard he tried, however). “How do I look?”

“You look…” Peter paused, “…really stupid,” he finished with a snicker.

David sniffed, moving out of the pose and crossing his arms, “You’re just jealous.”

“You keep on believing that.” David ignored him, admiring the web shooter. He wished the cartridges were actually full (and that he could actually push the button), but still…if he could tell his forum buddies they’d froth at the mouth and die of envy.

As he pretended he could actually shoot webs, he couldn’t help but notice something. The web shooter was very…bendy. The cartridges were spaced far enough apart (scant millimeters, but it was enough) that he could comfortably bend his wrist, but he couldn’t help the fear that if he overextended in any direction, something would snap, and it would fall apart. To say nothing of the fact that, out in the field, Peter regularly did battle with people that could deadlift cars.

He stopped, turning his web-shooter-clad wrist over and running his fingers along it, “It feels…fragile.”

“It’s tougher than it looks,” Peter said, holding a hand out. David returned the device, after which Peter turned around, removing the cartridges to fiddle with the insides again. He continued, “But I do need to perform maintenance on them at least three times a week.”

“Where do you get the parts?”

“I cannibalize watches I buy from pawn shops and thrift stores for the gears. I dumpster dive for everything else.”

David wrinkled his nose, “That can’t be sanitary.”

“No more unsanitary than what I usually get into.” He had a point.

David hummed, rubbing his chin as he thought about how to fix the fragility. The biggest problem was the web cartridges. They were, after all, solid pieces of metal. Ten of them packed together. “You know,” he said after thinking about it for a minute, “if you got rid of the multiple cartridges—made one big one—you could reinforce the web-shooters without having to sacrifice their flexibility.”

“I thought about that years ago,” Peter said, turning around. “But I came across one big problem.”

“What?”

“Reloading the cartridge.” The Hero shook his head, “Popping out and replacing the cartridges took longer than I liked.”

“And replacing ten at a time is better?” In response, Peter closed his web-shooter, clasping it over his wrist. Staring deadpan at David, he slid the ten cartridges into it like a kid would shove coins into an arcade machine. He was done in six seconds flat.

“…What about removing them?”

Blank stare in place, Peter presented his wrist, pressing down on the web-shooter’s button. It cycled through the empty cartridges, and air started to hiss out of an empty one. He kept the button pressed down, and seconds later, they popped off, one at a time onto the floor.

“I’ve been doing this for years, David.” 

A chuckle, “Fair enough.” But still his mind wandered. “What if,” David said, scratching his chin, “You made a sort of…cartridge bandolier? So you could just, like, slap them all on together? And then expel them all at once?”

Peter hummed, crossing his arms, “I guess that could streamline the process by a few seconds. Keep them all more secure too. But how would I do that?”

“Magnets?” David suggested.

“What about the internal parts?”

“That…” David paused, “…That needs some extra thinking.”

“…You want to build it, don’t you?”

“Help out my personal Hero do better at his self-appointed job?” David asked, faux-aghast.

Peter smirked, “I don’t have the time, but if you happen to make up some blueprints, I wouldn’t mind looking them over with you.”

David nodded, leaving Peter’s dorm with a silent wave. He probably should do some homework, but this was just as—no, much more—important.

/+/+/+/+/

**A/N: Just nerds doing nerd things. Be sure to leave a review. Later.**


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